National Geographic invites everyone to reply to 1977 WOW! signal

National Geographic is gearing up for its “Chasing UFOs” series, and to celebrate, everyone has been invited to contribute to a reply that will be sent in response to the 72-second long signal known as the WOW! signal, which was detected by Jerry R. Ehman at Ohio State University in 1977. Since then, many have believed the signal was sent by aliens.

Alien or not, National Geographic is taking it seriously and admitted to be working with Arecibo Observatory to prepare the transmission, which will most likely be encrypted in binary code. On August 15, 2012 and exactly 35 years after the WOW! signal was detected, our messages from Earth will be shot up into space in the same direction from where the signal came from.

Contributing to the message is easy. All you have to do is jump on Twitter and start tweeting to get involved. All tweets with hashtag #ChasingUFOs sent between 8pm EDT on Friday June 29 and 3am EDT Saturday June 30 will be included in the message.